


Growing Up, A Bluth Tale

by HannahArendt



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: Absurd, Courtroom Drama, Drama, F/M, Humor, Spy - Freeform, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-05-28 14:14:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15050918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HannahArendt/pseuds/HannahArendt
Summary: This piece of fiction is set after George Michael and Maeby accidentally get married and find out about it, and what happens when she finds the letters in the attic that George Michael had hid them in, leading to true feelings against all the odds, finally being discovered. This fiction is consequently an alternative ending to season 3 moving on into season 4.





	1. Chapter 1

George Michael sat in his lower bunk bed, trying to read his book for school. His mind however, kept on wondering to his cousin Maeby who was also reading in her bed. Not helping to George Michael’s feeling of distraction was the fact that the bed Maeby was in, was just above him, as she shared the top half of the bunk bed in the model home of the only home to had been constructed by the Bluth company in the Sudden Valley project. The book he was reading was on mathematics, but he was neither interested enough to read the it properly or energetic enough to read downstairs. So, instead, his eyes just skimmed over the pages, taking in random words and phrases, his mind concentrated fully on the girl above him. 

Maeby, lying in the bed above her cousin was not reading for school, but rather the new script for her upcoming movie about a girl who could speak to dead historical figures. In one scene, Cindy (the main character) got home after being bullied, so, using her special powers she asked Martin Luther King for advisor on how to stand up to bullies. The script was both educational and fun, although Maeby suspected that the scene where Hitler helps Cindy with her World War Two project would not be suited to a Jewish demographic. She was more interested in her script then George Michael was in his book, but she to could not think properly. She had learnt a few days ago that their fake marriage had in fact been a real marriage; much to her dismay. She was 16, and she was way too young to be married, and yet she was, and to her cousin as well. It also didn’t help that, no matter how much se tried to deny it, she still had some lingering feelings for him. Today her mind kept on going back to the first time they kissed three months ago on that sofa in the living rom. But George Michael was her cousin, and there was no way anything could happen between them. She just kept on dreading that her mom would find out about them, or even worse, that her uncle Michael would find out. Somehow, Maeby suspected that Michael’s mantra of “family first” did not extend to sexual relations between cousins. 

There was a knock at the door which woke the two teenagers up from their thoughts. George Michael got up and replied, “come in”, to the knocker.  
In stepped Gob, the usual grin on his face, and immediately George Michael had a feeling he was going to be asked to do something that he would not normally do.  
“Hey kids, what’s up?” Gob asked, his grin still wider than ever.  
“We’re fine,” replied George Michael, his internal body clock timing how long until Gob asked for whatever it was he wanted.  
“Yeah me to, I’ve got a magic show going at a local primary school, so I’m just preparing my illusions. But I checked online and the schools mostly African-American, so I thought, just to make the pupils all feel at rest that I would introduce them to Franklin.”  
George Michael shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t think that’s the best idea uncle Gob, not after you used Franklin at that magic act in the black church.”  
Gob snorted. “Yeah, just because some black people don’t like Franklin, all black people don’t like Franklin. Honestly, I would expect better from you George Michael.”  
As a matter of fact, very few black people had a problem with Franklin per say, it was more the 40-year old white guy controlling his voice in the duet known as ‘its not easy being white,’ which had a tendency to make some African-Americans feel a tad patronised. “Anyway”, Gob continued, “I have to go to some stupid board meeting or Michael would kill me, so I need you two kids to go up to the attic and find Franklin for me.”  
At this, Maeby instantly rose from her bed and looked at her uncle with incredulity. “And why in a million years would we do that?” she asked.  
“Because,” Gob began “if you do this for me their might be some money in it for you,” Gob said, and putting his hand behind George Michael’s ear he pulled out a mouse which immediately squealed and scuttled under the desk. “Oh sorry, must have been the wrong hand. I’ve got to come up with a way of remembering that.”

 

George Michael and Maeby at their uncle’s insistence soon found themselves looking through craters of boxes in order to find Gob’s puppet, Franklin. They had presumed the job would be easy, but ever since their grandfather had moved out of the attic it had once again become a dumping ground for the family’s rubbish. Old cornballers that were never permitted for US production lay scattered around the edges of the room, Tobias’s cut-offs were packed into an old suitcase while George Sr’s doll friends were stashed away back into the doll house, a look of sadness and loneliness marked on their faces as if they had just been through some sort of break up. In a way they had.  
“Hey, I think I found something.” Maeby signalled to her cousin to come around as she found a number of letters in a brown box at the back of the attic.  
George Michael went over to check out what Maeby had find, only to feel his heart stop. It stopped like a speeding car breaking to avoid a child walking across a road. What he found himself staring at was the love letters he had written to himself confessing his love for his cousin. Maeby was examining the letters, her eyes growing wider. George Michael rushed over to her and immediately lunged for the box but Maeby had already got hold of a few of the letters and was reading them, retreating across the floor, reading as she did so, taking in the words that he had written about her.  
“Oh, that’s nothing,” George Michael nervously sputtered, the words stumbling out of his mouth. His palms had suddenly becoming sweaty, beads of sweat dripping from them in such magnitude he looked like he could have just come out of a swimming pool. A very sweaty swimming pool.  
“What is this?” Maeby asked, looking straight at George Michael.  
“Its nothing,” George Michael repeated as he desperately tried to snatch the bundle of letters his cousin was reading from her hand. Maeby was quicker however and darted to the other side of the attic ducking beneath his arms to increase the space between the two of them. She was taking in George Michael’s written words with both confusion and understanding.  
“You love me.” It wasn’t a statement Maeby had asked her cousin, but rather it was a statement. “These letters, you wrote these because you love me, don’t you?”  
George Michael felt his whole world, his whole reality come crashing down on him, like the roof of his life had collapsed and he was stranded in the rubble of the aftermath. He could only stand there, his mouth open, utterly defeated. “Yes, but, no, but … you see, I wrote those letters ages ago; and I mean ages ago.”  
And then, to George Michael’s surprise Maeby laughed. The laugh was not a kind laugh, or a happy laugh, but a laugh interwoven with cruelty and a desire to humiliate. It struck him still, as if the embarrassment had frozen him still so that he could not respond or even defend himself from her heartless tone.  
“Well, I guess you must have always felt something for me otherwise you wouldn’t have kissed me, but this,” she said, indicting to the letters in her hands as if they were proof of her superiority over him, “well I could not have predicted this.”  
George Michael just stood there. He felt hurt and humiliated, and he wasn’t just going to take it, but he couldn’t protect himself either and so, without saying a word, he stormed out of the attic. He stormed out, away from Maeby, away from the letters, away from his feelings, but above all, away from the sense of being made to feel small that had been induced to him like poison to his veins when Maeby, standing there, had laughed at him with such cruelty she may as well have plunged a sharp cold knife into his heart.


	2. Chapter 2

Buster was talking to Lindsey in the dining room of the model home about his plans to try and resurrect his army career when the two siblings heard the slam of a door. A few moments latter they saw Maeby franticly rush down the stairs. She ran to the door, but then rushed back into the dining room.  
“Did you hear George Michael leave,” she asked in a frantic voice.  
“That was George Michael?” said a surprised Buster, “that’s odd cause in the army we’re trained to identify people by the way they open and close doors, and that was really more of a mother closing door after being sent an accurate birthday card door closing sound then a George Michael closing door sound,” Buster said, oblivious to the distress that Maeby was clearly in.  
“Oh God, I did something really bad,” Maeby explained, the pace of her words quick and speedy while her head fell into her hands.  
“What did you do?” asked her mother, realising that this was one of those moments that she had read about where mothers were supposed to show compassion to their children.  
Maeby looked up, her eyes darting between her oblivious uncle and curious mother. She knew that she could not tell them the truth, that would just be to humiliating for George Michael; not to mention it would risk the information about how they kissed coming out in the open, so instead she silently prayed that her mother’s indifference to her life would prevail over her duty for Lindsey to be informed about her daughter’s world.  
“Oh, he told me something and I laughed at him. It’s nothing,” she explained.  
“No, tell me,” Lindsey insisted.  
Maeby knew she had to do what she did best and lie. “Oh, well, George Michael told me that he’s planning to run away to Mexico and-”  
“He’s what!” Lindsey yelled, standing up so fast that her chair fell back. “Why the hell is he running away to Mexico?”  
“I don’t know,” Maeby replied quickly. “Something about him being sick of his family and wanting to get away.”  
“No, he can’t go to Mexico,” Buster exclaimed, also rising from his chair. “Do you know what they do to people as weak as George Michael in that country? They use his but hole for drugs Maeby. His but hole. Trust me Maeby, I’ve been to Mexico and I know what it’s like.”  
He hadn’t and he didn’t.  
Lindsey was already running after George Michael and was in the front lawn of the model house, screening the landscape for any sign of their supposedly runaway nephew. Both Buster and Maeby had rushed after her and as they came onto the lawn Buster screamed.  
“What?” cried Lindsey.  
“Oh nothing, I thought I saw a wasp and mother says that I’m allergic to anything that can cause me pain,” replied Buster, his hands moving protectively up to his chest.  
At that point Lindsey screamed.  
“I knew that was a wasp and not a fly. Get away from me!” yelled Lindsey’s brother as he desperately tried to bat away what was in fact a bright speck of dust from his head.  
“No!” Lindsey cried. “Look, the stair car is gone, George Michael must have taken it to get across the border.”  
The stair car had in fact been borrowed by Gob when his usual mode of transport had run out of battery. George Michael had in fact stormed out of the front door only to take a furious walk around the house in anger and was not in fact making his way to Mexico.  
“We can take my car,” Lindsey said. She did in fact make her way back inside to get Michael’s keys for Michael’s car. “Maeby, stay here,” her mother ordered. “If Michael comes home, explain everything to him, but tell him not to panic, me and Buster have things under control.” And so, with that the two adults raced after a kid to stop him from reaching the border to get to Mexico, a kid who was in fact in the backyard of the house that those same two adults had just raced from.

 

After storming out of the house, George Michael had found himself circling the house, seething at the way Maeby had laughed at him. He felt humiliated and worthless and just did not want to see his cousin at that moment. After all, it wasn’t like she wasn’t blameless either for the feelings he had developed towards her. She had kissed him, and then tried to get him to kiss her again. In fact, she had started this all of when she had kissed him the first time they had met, he had fallen for her ever since. And now, when she finally found out about just how much and how long he had been in love with her, she laughed at him like he was nothing. Hearing the commotion at the front of the house he wandered over to see what was happening. His father’s car was driving away at high speed, leaving tire marks in the sand behind it while Maeby looked on with a look of stunned disbelief on her face.  
“What’s happening,” he asked.  
“Oh,” Maeby exclaimed, wheeling around to face George Michael, surprised at the sound of his voice. “My mother and Buster are driving to the Mexico border because I told them you were fleeing the country.”  
“Why did you tell them that?” George Michael asked. Internally he sighed at another one of Maeby’s lies.  
“Because they asked why you stormed out so I had to make up something quickly,” she explained, her words flowing fluently out of her as is if she was desperate to show how completely transparent she was with him.  
George Michael exhaled some air. “Fair enough,” he grumbled, not looking her in the eyes. He wanted to start yelling or something because he knew that was what he expected of himself after the way she had just embarrassed him, but he felt weak and so was deprived of the ability to stand up for himself, so instead, he just lowered his eyes to the ground and allowed for an awkward silence between the two cousins to engulf them.  
Maeby cleared her throat, “look, George Michael, I’m sorry. I really am, its just that when I saw the letters I did find it kind of funny. I mean, you had even tried to draw me.”  
“Really!” George Michael said, his voice getting louder, “because it sure as hell wasn’t funny to me!”  
“I know,” she said calmly, “and I ‘m sorry.” A look of genuine regret was on her face. “Do you accept my apology?”  
George Michael knew that Maeby had not deliberately meant to hurt his feelings. His anger towards her was just a cover for his embarrassment, so he decided to accept her apology. “Yeah, sure. I’m just, well a little bit embarrassed, that’s all,” he confessed.  
Maeby looked at him sympathetically. “I think we need to have a talk.” She entered the now empty house, beckoning for George Michael to follow her.

 

George Michael followed Maeby into the kitchen, and the two sat down at the small table on the high stools that were incredibly uncomfortable as well as dangerously shaky.  
“So,” Maeby began, looking at her cousin in an oddly relaxed manner, “how long have you felt this way about me.” The unperturbed way she asked the question was the result of her decision that she was going to be honest now. Totally honest.  
“I guess since you first kissed me on the boat,” George Michael said, and to his surprise he found himself not sounding nearly as nervous as he thought he would. Something about Maeby’s relaxed expression and tone had helped relax him in turn so that he felt he could speak freely.  
“Well that makes sense,” she replied. “What about when you were dating Anne.”  
“Oh, I still liked you then,” he said, again in that unusual casual manner. “Ever since the second time we kissed my feelings have felt like more I suppose.”  
Maeby lowered her eyes to a small scratch on the table, put there by Buster after he foolishly attempted to grab a fruit juice box that was lying on the counter with his hook. They had both kissed each other for the second time on the sofa in the living room, but it was their first real kiss because it was their first romantic kiss. But she, not George Michael, had been the one to suggest they do it again, only to be stood up by him. They hadn’t discussed that kiss that never was, accept in a mention of it when Maeby pronounced doubts about her fake (now real) marriage to George Michael. She guessed that if she was asking George Michael to pronounce all his feelings to her, she should do the same.  
“I was really angry when you stood me up that time,” she exclaimed, not looking at his eyes.  
There was a deep, almost mournful silence, and then:  
“I didn’t mean to stand you up, its just my dad saw me in the stair car where I had fallen asleep and so he drove of with me and by the time I woke up we were miles out. I’m sorry, I should have explained that to you, but I guessed you just would never want to discuss what happened between us ever again, so….”  
There was another uncomfortable silence, but with this new revelation Maeby rose up her head and looked at him in the eyes. “I wish I had known that. I guess one of the reasons I laughed at you when I found your notes was that it proved that you were always more into me then I was into you. Until now I thought that I was just the sad sap with feelings for my cousin. She gave him a smile. “But I guess we both are.”  
George Michael gave a small, nervous laugh. “Well, that’s just the problem isn’t it. We’re cousins so nothing can ever happen between us I suppose.”  
The words George Michael spoke hit Maeby like a bombshell. She didn’t know why. After all, it was the exclamation of a simple fact she had known for a long time. They were cousins, and nothing she could do would change that, so they could never be together. A sudden feeling of helplessness came over her, like she was trapped in a situation not of her own doing. Ever since she was a little girl, Maeby had hated that feeling. The feeling of being dependent on someone else, and their being nothing she could do to overcome that. The feeling that it did not matter what action she took, it would always turn out the same because the result had been predetermined by someone else. By something stronger then her. Some people liked that feeling, yet Maeby knew what that feeling really was. Cowardice. Cowardice at not being able to accept that you were in control of your actions. And yet, Maeby was now in that very same situation. She was suffering from that same helplessness because, what could she do?  
“What about you, when did you start having feelings for me?” George Michael asked.  
Maeby considered refusing to answer, but that wasn’t fair. He had told her, so she would tell him.  
“I started feeling jealous when you were spending all your free time with Anne.” In her heads she rolled her eyes. “But it was only after I kissed you that I started to realise the true feelings I had.” Maeby who was so good at lying felt strangely liberated by the frank nature of the discussion she was now having with George Michael. She had always lied as a mark of resistance against her parents so as to prove her independence. Now however, it was by telling the truth, the embarrassing truth, that she was showing her true courage and her true independence. “I was so jealous” she said with a laugh, “that I tried to get you to see me snogging Annyoung at the hospital the time Pop-Pop had that supposed heart attack.”  
George Michael upon hearing this piece of information could not help but laugh along as well. “I wonder whatever happened to Annyoung?” he questioned.  
As a matter of fact, he was currently assisting the FBI in investigating the Bluth company. This was easy for him to do as his growing up in China, he had developed a strong ability to spy on his fellow citizens for subversive traits, a special skill that had rendered his internal ‘subversive monitor’ of the charts when he had entered the Bluth family.  
“You know,” Maeby started, speaking slowly so as not to scare George Michael and giving him a sly look of mischief that he had come to know so well, “we never really did finish that kiss on the couch.”  
George Michel gulped internally. “No. Well, I suppose we kissed at that wedding-”  
“But that was just for show,” interrupted Maeby, an impatient tone wedded into her voice. “We never got to kiss privately, you know.” Maeby knew what she was doing, but she figured that if she did get that kiss with him that she had been dreaming about for a long time, maybe then her feelings would go away. And if not, well, what har could one kiss do.  
“Well,” said George Michael, the sound of his voice dropping while his eyes transfixed themselves her lips, “I suppose that could work.”  
“Ok,” she said in a whisper.  
Maeby, very slowly, leaned in. The two cousins paused as they prepared to kiss, but George Michael had a small, but sure smile on his face, and this, reassuring Maeby gave her the courage she needed to lean over the table to reach George Michael’s lips. She felt her heart racing at a million miles per second, like it had when they had been on that couch all those months ago. It was when their lips touched that Maeby found herself feeling the happiest she had ever felt. The taste of George Michael’s lips on hers. It was exquisite. Without quite planning it, her tongue moved into his mouth, and he opened with an equal amount of passion and hunger. Now he was touching her cheek as he kissed her, and it was so exquisite that she could not help but allow a soft moan to emulate from her as the kiss depend. After about a minute the two broke apart. They sat there, lips not touching each other but so close together that Maeby could hear George Michael breathing. She found her eyes locked in his, as if a connection had been created that could never break. She saw her reflection in his eyes, and, for the first time she found herself thinking she was beautiful. It was a feeling she had never felt before because she had never really been told, but George Michael had told her with that kiss. She felt like she was an adult, not a sixteen-year-old teenage, but an adult, as she sat there, absorbed in his eyes, George Michael’s eyes. She felt adult, and alive and happy. She prepared to lean in for a second kiss, desiring nothing more then to feel that feeling again, but then an interruption destroyed that prospect entirely.  
“Whoa, now that is unexpected!”  
Both George Michael and Maeby spun round to look at who had spoken, George Michael starting up from his chair almost breaking it in the process, fear jolting in both their hearts at who had caught them. There, standing in the doorway, back from his meeting, was Gob, a look of utter delight plastered onto his face. Never had his grin looked more malicious then now.


	3. Chapter 3

As George Michael spun round to face his uncle Gob it occurred to him that his worst fear had come alive. That someone would find out about his feelings for his cousin, and tell his dad. Ok, so maybe his worst fear was his dad finding out, but his uncle founding out was definitely high on his list of worst fears. It was up there with his fear of any organised sports that included the necessity for changing rooms and catching things.  
“Its not what it looks like!” George Michael instinctively yelled.   
“Why? What is this? Cause it looks to me like you two were making out,” Gob said, pointing his fingers at George Michael and Maeby. “What was it then. Did you shrink Franklin and then loose him in your cousin’s mouth?”   
For one odd second, it occurred to George Michael that Franklin had, like many African Americans, been left behind by the people who were supposed to assist them. It was a fitting, it not entirely accurate description of racial disparities in America.   
“We were,” stuttered George Michael, desperately seeking some plausible lie. “We were just experimenting, to see, to see what it would be like to kiss.” As George Michael stuttered this explanation out from a very sweaty tongue, it occurred to him that this was not entirely a lie, after all it wasn’t like they were secretly dating or anything.   
Gob smirked. “Yeah, and I was just experimenting when I screwed that wife that I was sort of married to.”   
“No, no we were just doing it because… because,” George Michael turned around to Maeby, the family expert on lying in search of some assistance.   
“Because I’ve got a date latter on and I wanted George Michael to help me prepare.”   
Gob looked at Maeby suspiciously. “When you get someone to help you prepare for a date, it usually involves picking out a dress, not snogging them.”   
Maeby gave her uncle a look so cold it would have made Lucifer’s scrotum shrink. “I wanted someone to help me practice…” she paused, shifting unconfutable, “kissing.” Maeby looked mortified. Her cheeks were red, her eyes not looking at either Gob or George Michael, shame raging throughout her body like she was on fire with humiliation. There was an incredibly uncomfortable pause before Gob asked:  
“So… what’s this boy’s name? Let me guess, is it Steve Holt?”   
Maeby looked at her uncle incredulously. “Steve Holts my cousin.”   
Gob shrugged. “Yeah, but so’s George Michael and you were just making out with him.”   
“No, his name if you must know is” Maeby stuttered as she thought of a name, “Benjamin Disraeli.”   
Maeby had recently learnt about the life of this former British Prime Minister from a movie that she had rejected because she found to boring. It had gone right in the bin next to a script called ‘The Iron Lady.’   
“Benjamin. Who would name their child Benjamin? Are you sure that’s a real name?” Gob asked, his eyes darting up to his brain.  
“Yeah,” Maeby replied. “Benjamin. Benjamin as in Benjamin Franklin.”  
“Oh right. The guy who invented the kite,” Gob said.   
For the record, Benjamin Franklin did not, nor never claimed to have invented the kite. “Yeah well, I’m still goanna have to tell Michael and Lindsey.”  
“No!” George Michael exclaimed in a panic. “Please don’t, we’ll do anything!”   
At these magic words, that evil grin spread over Gob’s face, his sparkling white teeth being bared to all the world. “Well….” he began slowly, “I don’t see Franklin anywhere, and I do need two assistants for this trick I have panned at my magic show tomorrow.”   
George Michael and Maeby looked at each other, a look of surrender on both their faces. George Michael thought the look appeared to be most unnatural on his cousin’s face but faced with no choice they both accepted Gob’s proposal. Somehow, they both knew that Gob’s magic show was not going to end in an uneventful manner. 

 

Maeby lied in bed, thinking of what she had got herself into. She and George Michael had agreed to be in Gob’s new magic trick, which consisted of there now being two vanishing cabinets, with secret doors at the back. George Michael would enter one while she would enter the other, then after Gob had performed his ‘spell’ for the kids in the audience, Maeby would end up in George Michael’s cabinet, and vice-versa. The trick was a thin but convincing piece of glass that stretched between the two cabinets that matched the purple curtains which acted as the backdrop for Gobs performance. Thus, when put into the cabinets, all the two teenagers would have to do would be to use the outside door of the cabinets, and then walk behind the mirror, imprinted with the picture of the purple curtains, to get in the inside of the opposite cabinet. It was a simple trick, but Maeby was quietly fuming at her uncle for blackmailing her like this. She was also quietly hoping that her feelings for George Michael would subside, but her mind kept on travelling back to that memory of their kiss over the kitchen table just this afternoon. She kept on dreading what would happen if Michael would ever find out. Eventually Michael had come back home from work on his bicycle, and after questioning Maeby about the location of his car she explained that Buster and Lindsey had taken it, When Michael had asked why, she simply explained that they had come under the false impression, somehow, that his son was running away to Mexico. She would deal with trying to figure out a better story when her mother and Buster actually did return from Mexico, providing they had even got they’re in the first place. Knowing her mother, she would probably be distracted by shoe shopping or something. 

 

As she lay in her bed, thinking about her forbidden feelings about her cousin, she could not help but hear a continuous noise in the dark of her bedroom, coming from below her bed. It was the very quiet sound of ruffled sheets and heavy breathing. Maeby could not help but smile to herself. She knew that noise. It was the noise of George Michael playing with himself in the bed below hers. She knew he only did it when he thought she was asleep; but she had heard him a few times before. It was only natural, he was a teenage boy, he needed to release his natural impulses sometimes and he hardly had anywhere else to do this, what with him sharing a room with her. Maeby had felt no feeling of shame or guilt for allowing him to do this and had not interrupted him before because she wasn’t made uncomfortable by this and if he knew she had heard him, he would be mortified. So instead she had happily ignored it. There would only be a problem if he found out she knew. But now, after their kiss she found herself feeling not uncomfortable or even embarrassed, but guilty for allowing him to do something that if he knew she could hear him do, he would not do in a million years. Or at least with her in the bed above. She also found herself feeling another feeling, a feeling of eroticism. That was new. She felt tempted, tempted to move her hand down her body towards her clitoris. She found, almost as if her hands were working without the consent of her brain, that her right hand was moving over her breasts, while her right hand was slowly proceeding downwards. She had played with herself often, but she always made sure she was in the adjacent bathroom and George Michael was far away before she did so. But now, she just felt the urge so much a she listened to what her cousin was doing below her. She forced herself to stop. She couldn’t, it would be wrong. Something however had stirred in her today, and a new bravery had taken over her. So, taking a deep breath, she moved her head over the side of her bed and asked:   
“Are you touching yourself?”   
The moment she spoke, even in just a whisper, she had heard a loud thump below her bed from where she presumed George Michael had hit his head in his reaction. There was the sound of frantic movement and rustling below and his face rose up to face Maeby, his body covered by both the dark of the room and the sheets on his bed.   
“No!” he said loudly.  
“Shhh” Maeby hissed, putting a finger to her lips, knowing that a few doors down her uncle Michael was sleeping.   
“I wasn’t,” George Michael responded in a panicked whisper. Maeby couldn’t see his face accurately in the dark, but she knew what his features would look like. Wide eyes, red cheeks and a half-open mouth. All trade marks of the classic George Michael response to shock and panic.   
“Its ok,” Maeby said lightly, “if that’s what you want to do, then feel free to do it.” There was a toying tone to her voice. She couldn’t help but enjoy the power she suddenly felt over George Michael, the feeling of seductive power that she currently possessed. She knew what she was doing was a little bit mischievous, but she loved it.   
More whispered stuttering came from George Michael. “I wasn’t.... doing that I was just-”  
“I know what you were doing George Michael,” she replied to his protestations, her voice raised by just a bit, adding a stricter emphasis to it. “Hey, its ok,” she added, changing her tone, to a lighter, more relaxed one. She added a smile, but she realised that he couldn’t see in the pitch black of the bedroom.  
“I’m sorry, I thought you were asleep, I didn’t mean t, I was just…” the words coming out of his mouth in a panicked, fast series of barely audible whispers.”  
“Shhh.” This time the shush that Maeby gave him wasn’t panicked or reactionary, but slower, and more drawn out, more seductive. Her left hand raised itself over the bed towards George Michael’s shoulder where it proceeded to rub it in a conciliatory sort of way. “What were you thinking about?” She wasn’t sure why she asked the question, but she did.   
“I-I don’t know what you mean,” he responded with a nervous sort of giggle.   
“Well ok, let me ask you, who were you thinking about?” Maeby knew the answer she wanted to hear.  
“Oh, just no one.”  
“Liar,” Maeby said softly, her left hand running its fingers through George Michael’s hair, the feeling on her fingertips electrifying her entire body as she stared at the darkened face of her cousin.  
“Oh, no, I was just thinking of sexy girls, you know, doing sexy things.” It was possibly the worst description that George Michael could have come up with.   
“Tell me,” Maeby said, deepening her tone while moving closer to George Michael, “who you were thinking of.” Her voice, at least in her mind, was commanding and clear, and she didn’t dare think that George Michael would not tell her who he had been thinking of just a moment ago, nor did she think he would lie about who he had been thinking of just a moment ago. But he did.  
“Just Anne.”   
Now, that was definitely the worst description George Michael could have gave for what he had just been thinking off.   
“Anne.”   
“Oh, yeah. Anne.”  
“Anne.”  
“Yeah, as in my ex-girlfriend Anne. You know.”   
Maeby was silent for a few moments, and then she recoiled her hand away from George Michael’s head like his hair was on fire and her fingers had just been burnt so badly that she needed to run them over some freezing cold water. She found her breathing, which had been heavy from the erotic feelings of being so close to George Michael, both physically and emotionally, get deeper, not from being turned on, but from anger and fury. A malicious silence seemed to have erupted like a volcano between the two persons, and she suddenly felt the urge, an urge that she had not felt for a long time, to hit someone and then run away from them forever.   
“Well, that’s fine.” She didn’t mean it. “Why don’t I let you finish masturbating over Anne.” These last words she spat in a hushed voice, but she said them with considerable venom.   
“Oh no, I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable,” George Michael protested.   
“Oh no George Michael, you wouldn’t make me uncomfortable, in fact, I’m goanna masturbate as well. We can masturbate together.” Anger fuelling her, she lay back on her bed and put her right hand underneath her sheets, and underneath her pyjama bottoms, gripping her pleasure centre in a way that provided no pleasure whatsoever. “Maybe I’ll think of Benjamin while I’m at it.”   
George Michael stuttered in total confusion. “Who?”   
“The guy I was supposed to go on a date with, remember.”   
“But, he doesn’t exist,” George Michael said, with a stricken tone of panic in his voice.   
“Well, he’s more of a turn on for me then Anne.” Maeby practically hissed these last words as her hand moved around the lower half of her body. George Michael just sat there, gazing up at her in stunned astonishment. After about 30 seconds, in which Maeby had not produced any feeling of eroticism, she started moaning in a furious attempt to make him jealous. “Oh Benjamin, fuck me Benjamin, fuck me!” she whispered so Michael in the next room couldn’t hear, but loud enough so the immobilised George Michael could hear every word as clear as day. “Fuck yes!” With that she pretended to orgasm, replicating what she had seen women do and what she herself had done on many occasion, using her left hand to grip onto her breasts while panting and breathing, loud enough for him to hear, but quiet enough for her pretended exhalations not to leave the bedroom. She panted and flung her right arm over the edge of the bed so that it landed on the wood causing some momentary pain which she ignored. She panted some more, and then, without looking at him she turned around on her side so she was facing the wall, her back against him. “Well that was fun, I’ll see you tomorrow.” And with that she pretended to fall asleep. George Michael just sat on his bed, stunned into silence.


	4. Chapter 4

George Michael walked morosely down to the kitchen for breakfast, his dressing gown slopping behind him, dressed in his pyjamas. It had been the way Maeby had turned her back on him after doing what she had done that had hurt George Michael so much, and now he dreaded the magic act that he was going to have to perform with her. After what had happened last night he had just lay there, not getting any sleep. He wasn’t stupid, he knew Maeby had acted like that because of what he had said, and he wished he hadn’t said it now, but what else was he supposed to say? Tell her the truth, tell her that he had been imagining her, naked, in front of him, kissing him, touching him. He couldn’t have done that, so he had stupidly said the first name that had entered his head, and boy did he now regret it. He had lay there all night, regretting that he had said that name, but hurt at how Maeby was able to just lie up they’re in her bed, and pretend that nothing had happened. So, it was in a miserable mood that he entered the kitchen of the model home. Maeby was there, sitting at the table eating some cereal, and she immediately looked down when he entered the room.   
“Hey buddy,” Michael said, already dressed and making some tea, “seeing as you got the whole summer off, I was thinking, why don’t I take you out this afternoon and we go on that fishing trip I’ve been promising you.”   
“Oh, thanks dad, but I’m not really in the mood today.”  
“You sure, hey, maybe I could invite Maeby, how does that sound?”  
At this, Maeby instantly shot her head up and quickly explained, “I can’t, I have to go shopping with a few friends of mine from school.” This was a lie, although ironically, they could have said they were helping Gob with his magic trick, although the less Michael knew about the kid’s arrangement with Gob, the better.   
“Oh, come on, I’ve got my rod,” Michael said, a grin on his face.  
At this moment Tobias strutted into the room. “Ah, funny you should say that Michael because I was wondering if, with my wife currently in Mexico, I could come with you. I’ve just managed to figure out how to get my rod up,” he indicated to an erect fishing rod, “and I’ve got it well lubricated with some fish oil so that when it penetrates the pond I can collect all the little fishes we need for daddy to make his daughter a big, big dinner.” Tobias looked at each member of the group in turn, “so, what do you say?”   
Michael looked at his son. “Yeah, I’ll think me and George Michael we’ll go sometime next week.” And with that, Michael left the kitchen for work.

 

Latter that day, Gob had picked George Michael and Maeby in the family stair car and had driven them out of Orange County to a kindergarten, named ‘Hamilton’s School’ where they were invited in for the magic show. As they were escorted through a corridor, overwhelmed with kids Maeby turned to her uncle and asked:   
“Don’t we have to be checked out for criminal records or something?”   
Gob snorted. “Please Maeby, if anyone can just come in here with a machine gun and massacre these kids into human plaster, I think two kids with their uncle can make it in alright.”  
Several of the kids gasped, frozen to the spot, staring at Gob with open mouths and bulging eyes. Gob looked at the kids around him and, realising his inappropriate mentions of potential school massacres said:   
“I meant candy. Massacre kids into human candy.”

 

The magician and his two assistants were led by a teaching assistant to an empty changing room. Gob put one large rucksack down onto a bench and started pulling out an assortment of clothes.   
“So,” the teaching assistant began, a pretty woman with blonde hair platted down below the left side of her head, and flowing its way down her left shoulder, “I’ll let you guys change and when your ready you can just head straight down to Classroom F where your magic trick is waiting.”  
“Trick,” Gob questioned, “I’ll think the word your looking for is an illusion,” and with that he pulled sugar kitten biscuit from behind her ear, holding it up to the teacher. “Tell me, would you like to eat my pussy?”   
The teaching assistant did not look impressed, and left the changing room, not taking the sugar-coated treat from Gob’s hand. He shrugged and took a bite. “I guess teachers just don’t get magic.”   
George Michael watched nervously as Maeby examined the clothing items that Gob had brought with them. “Are we going to have to change into these?” she asked.   
“You are,” Gob replied. “I’m already dressed,” he said ripping of his business suit revealing his black coated magicians blazer with a purple shirt underneath accompanied by a dazzling white collar. He looked more like a gay vampire then a world class magician. “I’ll see you two lovely assistants in Classroom F.” Then Gob, picking up another box that he had brought with him, left the changing room. There were a few moments of silent inaction before George Michael said:  
“We’d better start getting dressed.”   
“Yeah,” Maeby replied.   
As the two cousins started unpacking their suits from the rucksack they quickly realised that the changing room was a simple room with no walls to cover themselves. This was precisely why George Michael had such a logical fear of changing rooms. Maeby, embarrassed looked at her clothes and then at George Michael.   
“If you want to turn around?” she said, passive aggressively.   
George Michael felt a flush of anger. “Well, seeing as you seem alright with touching yourself in front of me, I think we can see each other change.” The words came out stiff and cold.   
Maeby looked at her cousin with a sad expression, and she bit her lip. George Michael felt extreme pleasure knowing that for the first time, she was more mortified then he was about their relationship. “I’m sorry for doing what I did last night, I just felt a little humiliated when you said,” she paused, “what you said.”  
Immediately, George Michael’s face softened, and his hard eyes melted into sympathy. Finding the courage within him he spoke up. “I was lying you know. I wasn’t thinking of Anne. I was, well I was thinking of someone else.”   
Maeby gave him a soft smile, and he felt his body tremble with fear and happiness at the same time. “Who were you thinking of.”  
“Someone I shouldn’t have.” The words were a confession. George Michael took a step towards her and found himself unable to take his eyes away from hers. It was the same feeling of excitement, of danger and of a sense of having a deep personal connection that he felt, the same feeling that he had felt yesterday back in the kitchen. He found himself acting like someone different, and yet he knew that within his actions that differed wildly from his normally cautious character, there was something truly authentic about them. Like he was finally playing himself out on the great stage of life, not attempting to hide from a hostile audience through performing the role of someone who was like him, but without the essential inner feelings which made him George Michael Bluth.   
“Let’s get changed,” Maeby said, a smile playing across her lips in a constant tempo of playful teasing. As she started unbuttoning her blouse, she gave George Michael a look of faked incredulity when he failed to turn around.  
“I’m turning, I’m turning” he insisted, rotating around.   
The two teenagers pulled off their clothes, but not in the embarrassed way that had dreaded a moment before, but in a playful way, like two young children who felt something for each other but were to embarrassed to do anything about it, and yet, as George Michael took his top of, replacing it with a white shirt designed with an upturned collar where a bow tie would be fitted, it was not the embarrassment caused by the ambiguity over the mutual feelings of two lovers, unsure how the other felt about them. It was the happy embarrassment of two people who are now aware of how the other feels about them but, thought George Michael as he pulled down his trousers, constrained from acting only by society, not by their own choosing. For, as he pulled up the black trousers of the suit, the suit which was to small for him, Maeby now knew of his feelings, and he knew Maeby’s. His reply to her question had been a confession, but her admission for her actions the night before was admittance also to the crush she still had on him.   
“I hope you’re not looking,” he said, his voice ringing through the changing room.   
“You wish,” she scoffed, and at this he laughed, no longer feeling insecure as he once had. Safe in the wonderful knowledge that as screwed up as this falling in love with your cousin stuff might me, he was not just some loser who had fallen into it alone. 

 

“Oh my God, he can’t be serious?”  
George Michael and Maeby had just finished getting ready, and after turning around to view each other’s clothes, it was clear that Maeby definitely had the worse end of the deal. While George Michael was dressed in a black blazer with a ridiculous purple shirt, she was dressed in a silk satin dress that was simply inappropriate for kids as young as seven. Her breasts were barley contained by the dress, and her smooth legs were visible from her ankles to just below her waist. She did not look happy about it and had asked the rhetorical question with a look of her trademark venom.   
“It looks very fetching on you,” George Michael said, his eyes unable to tear themselves away from roaming over her deliciously sweet body. “It really brings out-”  
“My breasts,” she interjected.  
“I was going to say eyes, but I suppose breasts work to,” he said, giving her a smile.  
Maeby could not help but smile back, but almost as quickly her furious face reappeared. “I am so going to kill Gob for this.”  
“We have to do this; can you imagine if my dad found out about us?”   
She shifted uncomfortably. “At least these kids are to young to get boners, right?”   
George Michael at that moment realised that he himself was feeling some naughty tingles that he was to embarrassed to show. He quickly placed his hands over the offending erection and agreed complicity. “Yeah, definitely way to young.”  
Maeby looked down, and instantly recognised George Michaels bulge. She took a step towards him, and while he found every inch of his body screaming to touch her, his mind desperately trying to restrain himself from kissing her then and there.   
“Classroom F we have to go to,” she said, her hands wondering gently towards his chest, her fingers pressing themselves lightly through the tight purple shirt, tracing their way lower towards his crotch.   
“Yeah,” smiled George Michael. He felt that happiest he had ever been, desiring no more then to touch the woman who he knew wanted to touch him.   
“Well,” she said in a husky voice, so close to him that he could feel her breath on his, “we ought to get going.”  
“Sure,” George Michael responded, “I’ll catch you up in a moment.”  
Maeby looked at him up and down gave her cousin a knowing smile. “Ok.” She left the changing room, her arms trailing behind her loosely like she was allowing them complete autonomy from the rest of her body so that they just came along with her, forced to by the simple fact they were connected to her by skin and muscle. It was the way that children often walked, carefree and without any concern for people surrounding them. And yet in the final glance she gave George Michael, an adult face was looking at him, with adult feelings and adult constraints, society’s constraints. This all culminated together into a beautiful mosaic form of adulthood. They had a come a long way since their time together as kids. George Michal was going to university soon, Maeby was a film director. They were adults, and it was because of this realisation of truth that George Michael, standing there in that changing room, felt exhilaration and fear, the exhilaration of forbidden romance, the fear of being caught. But above all else, he felt as if he was in a state of total freedom.


	5. Chapter 5

While Maeby and George Michael were preparing for Gob’s magic show at the school, George Sr and his wife were having a meeting with their lawyer Barry Zuckercorn. George Sr was currently under house arrest for embezzlement charges and had learnt from Barry that the CIA had now joined the hunt for evidence that would lead to a conclusive conviction.   
“So, your saying that some CIA agent is going to try and wiggle his way into our family just to get evidence on me?” George Bluth asked his attorney.   
“Well, that’s what my contact at the CIA tell me,” responded Barry.  
Lucile who had been listening to the conversation while sipping a margarita looked at Barry suspiciously. “How do you know this? What contacts in the CIA do you have?”  
Barry smiled and gave Lucile a grin. “If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.”  
The contact was in fact a cross-dressing prostitute who had been hired to the CIA as kitchen staff under their diversity program and had overheard a conversation about the plan to infiltrate the Bluth family while removing chewing gum from the floor of a conference room. The chewing gum latter turned out to be a KGB infiltration device.   
“So basically, your saying that someone is going to try to enter our family, by what, trying to seduce one of us?” George Sr said incredulously.   
“Possibly,” replied Barry, “but who knows, it might just be someone who you employ, or maybe just someone who comes in to check the tv. Like that guy.” Barry pointed at the cable tv guy who was currently fiddling with the television in the dining room.   
“He might be putting a bug in our television right now,” Lucile said, eyeing the engineer with suspicion.   
“What I don’t understand,” Barry continued, “is why the CIA care about your business dealings in the first place?”   
“Neither do I. Why do the CIA care about an FBI matter?” George Sr protested. “I just don’t understand why anyone would be interested enough in sending me to prison they would get,” George Sr waved his arms grounding looking for the right name, “James Bond to investigate me?”  
“James bond worked for MI6, so if they are using him then that means this is a British-American investigation, and that’s got to mean a raise in my price.”  
George Sr looked at his lawyer unimpressed. “I don’t care who they send, its why their sending them. Besides, I was a patsy for a British building company, their the ones who put me up to the job so why is no one investigating that company.”  
Barry raised his arms defensively, “I don’t make the law, I just obstruct it. I promise you I will look into this company, but until then,” he looked at George with sympathy, “you’re on your own.”   
George Sr rose angrily. “What do you mean I’m on my own, you’re my lawyer, you’re the one who’s supposed to be defending me for God’s sake!”


	6. Chapter 6

George Michael followed his Maeby through the corridors of the school until he at last caught up with her at the classroom that Gob’s magic trick was going to be performed. The room was surprisingly large and on the right-hand side of the room was a large stage, upon which two vanishing cabinets were placed, and if George Michael looked closely enough he could just about see a wide glass panel connecting the two cabinets, designed to camouflage against the purple curtained backdrop. Gob was dressed in his magician’s uniform and was talking to what looked like another magician. As George Michael walked over it became increasingly clearer that the two were arguing. When George Michael was close enough Gob spun round to face his nephew and beckoned his niece to come over.  
“George Michael, Maeby, this is Tony Wonder,” explained Gob, a deep bitterness entranced within his tone as he eyed his magical rival up and down.  
“Wow,” said Wonder in a smug sort of way, as he to eyed Gob’s two assistants. “Still using your nephew I see for magic tricks, but who’s this sexy piece of silk.” Wonder was looking at Maeby with a certain look in his eye that instantly made George Michael want to punch him.   
“This is my niece, and before you ask she’s sixteen you pervert,” Gob said, standing defensively in front of Maeby.  
“Did you just call me a pervert?” asked a self-righteous Wonder. “Honestly, just because I’m gay!”  
Tony Wonder had his reputation in the Magicians Alliance temporarily put into question when he had agreed to perform at a conference for men who suffered from not having any hair on their body. Unfortunately he had not cleared this with the Alliance and so consequently had his standing somewhat diminished within magical social circles. However, after ‘coming out’ as gay he had ensured that his act now contained a new edge as he incorporated his coming out of the closet through being handcuffed, only to explode out of thin air. It was very moving.   
“Besides,” continued Tony Wonder, “even if I was straight, I’ve got my own beautiful assistant, and an Alliance approved one at that.” He put his fingers to his mouth and whistled, and out came, to George Michael’s surprise, Sally Sitwell, his father’s ex-girlfriend. She was dressed in a blue costume, and while not as revealing as Maeby’s costume, George Michael did have to admit she looked fetching.   
“Sally Sitwell,” Gob exclaimed, looking at her in surprise. “Whatever happened to your brother’s widow?”  
Wonder smirked. “No way, it was way to complicated with her.” He looked at the two teenagers in the room and went on to say to them directly. “We were screwing, and she was basically my sister-in law. Well that’s just weird. It like if you were to screw your cousin. Just weird.” An uncomfortable tension suddenly arose in the room as George Michael and Maeby exclaimed a quick glance before looking away. Wonder continued, “in fact, its like if you two were to screw.” He intimated the two of them together with their fingers.” It’s like if you two were to just get together and screw. In fact if you want to imagine how weird it was, imagine you two having sex right now. You see, it was weird.” George Michael started sweating in his ridiculously tight suit. “And then imagine your gay. Makes it even weirder.”   
“Ok,” Gob interrupted, and he gave George Michael that sinister look like he was aware of how Tony Wonder’s monologue had made the situation between the two cousins awkward, “well, let me ask,” and Gob pointed his finger at Sitwell, “just answer me this, does your millionaire father know you’re now a magician’s assistant hear?”  
Sally Sitwell gave Gob a broad smile, and her eyes sparkling she said, “what daddy doesn’t know can’t hurt him.”   
“Come on,” Tony Wonder said, beckoning his head to Sitwell while steering her with his arms via her shoulders, “let’s go down to the cafeteria to get some lunch.”   
“Wait, what trick are you doing?” asked Gob franticly.   
Wonder smirked. “If you must know it’s the same as your trick, just with a coffin that contains a false bottom. I’ll put Sally in it and make her disappear.” He shrugged, “its pretty basic, and usually I’d have myself buried with my old school diaries to represent the suppression of my homosexual feelings, but I’d don’t think the kids would get it so its just back to basics. I’m saving all my best tricks for the Gay Magicians Conference in the spring.”  
As Tony Wonder and Sally Sitwell an irritated Gob yelled back, “yeah, well at least I don’t have tricks Tony! I have illusions! Illusions!”  
“Whatever!” yelled back Wonder, raising his middle finger as he did so.  
As soon as Gob’s two foes had left the room he spun round to face George Michael and Maeby with that same evil grin on his face, that same look of mischief and cunning.   
“Who’s up for a little adventure?” he said, clapping his hands together.   
“What do you mean?” asked George Michael. He had a strong urge to do anything that could hinder Tony Wonder’s show after the way he had looked at Maeby, even if he was gay.  
“Tony Wonder just showed us his cards, so now it’s time to play poker. Find Tony Wonder’s room and open the coffin while I prepare my illusion. The bottom should open because hidden within the velvet of the box you should find some hinges. Put a hair clip in the hinges and when Sitwell’s in the coffin she won’t be able to push the bottom down.” Gob was looking between the two of them with twinkle of evil in his eyes.   
“No way,” hissed Maeby. She looked down at her sexy, revealing costume. “You’ve already made me look like my mother when she wants to be seated first at a restaurant, I’m not going to do your dirty work for you.”   
“Still, I can see that George Michael likes your dress.” Maeby immediately glanced at George Michael and then transfixed her look back at her uncle in an icy glance. The way he said it made it sound like a threat.   
“Let’s just get it over and done with,” George Michael said. He didn’t want to risk his dad finding out about his kiss with Maeby, and he kind of wanted revenge of Tony Wonder for eyeing Maeby like the way he had.   
“Great.” Gob took a hairpin out of his pocket. “You can use this.”  
Maeby took the hairpin from Gob’s hand. “Why do you have a hairpin in your pocket?” she asked.  
Gob huffed. “I always have one on me in case I need to escape from a venue and they’ve locked the door on me. Tobias lent me this one.”  
“Of course he did,” responded a despondent Maeby, and with that, she and her cousin left the classroom.


	7. Chapter 7

George Michael followed Maeby down the school corridors. Luckily for her, dressed in an outfit that did not leave much to the imagination, the corridors were empty as most of the kids were in class meaning that Maeby did not have a bunch of kids gawping at her as she walked past. As George Michael walked behind Maeby, his eyes got to fully take in her body. Her legs were bare and beautiful, her whole body seeming to sway as she walked, inviting him to come closer and touch her. George Michael could not stop himself but ogling her backside, the short, silk dress stretched against her bottom, pronouncing sexiness. The dress was a satin colour, glazed over with what appeared to be diamonds but was in fact just silver sequins. It tantalized him so much his staring was not just the result of the natural erotic feelings of a teenager, but he was mapping what Maeby looked like in that dress so that he could call upon the image later on when he was alone and wanted to use the image for his own personal pleasure. As he walked behind her he did not feel the same guilt and fear that he usually felt when admiring Maeby, say when he took glimpses of her coming out of the shower, or taking glances at her face when she wasn’t looking. Somehow, safe in the knowledge that she liked him also, it gave him both a sense of bravery and moral justification. It couldn’t be that bad to stare if she felt the same way about him. She was still his cousin however, but that simple fact had somehow found itself trapped in a section of his brain, snowed in by lust and romance. It wasn’t so buried beneath an avalanche of desire that its voice had been drowned out, more that it had been side-lined in favour of the other aspects of George Michael’s self. The aspects that were by their very nature the antithesis of the reason that declared that any relationship with Maeby was wrong. It could only lead to disaster. Their parents would not stand for it. It would drive apart their family if they ever got together and broke up. Would their children end up like Rita? All of these doubts protested from a position of weakness as a game of suggestive thoughts played out in George Michael’s mind. He imagined what he and Maeby would say to each other when they got back home. Would they start some secret affair, or would they just try to burry their feelings into oblivion? But Maeby didn’t seem to want that, and George Michael didn’t think he could do that either. Would they kiss? Would they even have sex? The thought made him blush, but blush in that indescribably nice way that girls in movies seemed to emulate when they were being flirted with. As the two continued walking down the empty corridor Maeby turned her head and gave George Michaela small smile, the same childlike smile on that adult face which Maeby had given him back in the changing room. He could only smile stupidly back. She suddenly doubled-back, peering through the window of a classroom, and beckoning to him. George Michael walked towards her, his eyes clumsily roaming her breasts which were struggling wonderfully against her dress.   
“Look.” Maeby indicated to the inside of the classroom where situated towards the whiteboard was a coffin of a mahogany colour. It was placed in front of rows of empty seats on top of a small, but elevated wooden platform. The height of this platform no doubt gave the teacher some weapon in trying to elevate herself into a position of authority over a bunch of lively students, unwilling to listen or work. The room was a smaller, but much brighter classroom then Gob’s venue.   
“This must be Tony Wonder’s trick,” said George Michael, and he eagerly entered the room with his cousin. 

 

Beams of hit sun instantly hit the two of them when they entered the room and the brightness from a vengeful sun forced George Michael to shield his eyes. Maeby had however already made her way to the coffin and had opened it up. George Michael walked over to her and looked at the inside, seeing the laced with purple velvet. He looked back towards the door, afraid that someone would walk in any minute.   
“I found it.” Maeby had been running her hand along the right-hand side of the inside of the coffin and had found a hinge. She took the hairpin from her pocket and placed it through the metal, connecting piece that was hidden at the side of the coffin, slightly above the centre so it was not exactly in the middle. Maeby paused, and then she reached into her hair pulling out her own hairpin. Her hair which had been long, now completely was let free.   
“What are you doing,” hissed George Michael, one eye on the door.   
“Their must be two hinges, ones not enough to hold someone’s weight.” She ran her hand further through the velvet, down and down until she got towards the end of the coffin. “Found it,” she whispered in victory. She made another small rip in the lining allowing her to place her own hairpin through the circular part of the metal hinge, just as she had done. “That should sure as hell stop Sitwell from being able to pass through the false bottom,” she explained.   
George Michael viewed the bottom of the coffin in confusion. It seemed to his eye to be exactly in line with the bottom of the floor on the elevated platform. And how did the false bottom open? He saw a flash of dark black that had hidden itself near the top end of the coffin amongst all the ruffled lining, and upon further inspection he realised it was a button. He pressed it. The bottom of the coffin seemed to try to open up by allowing itself to collapse downward, no doubt allowing the occupier to fall through, but they’re was the small sound of a faint thump as the coffin bottom moved downwards a little bit, but unable to perform its purpose as the button as the hinges had been jammed and so the system of pullies and levers that allowed for the fake bottom to fall had quite simply been sabotaged. Maeby pushed down, using her hand, on the bottom, seeing if it was stead. “I think its fine,” she said, giving George Michael a nod.   
“Good, now let’s get out of here,” he responded, a strong hint on nervousness in his voice.   
Suddenly, the two of them heard the sound of oncoming voices, unmistakably Tony Wonder’s and Sally Sitwell’s. Their footsteps were coming closer and the two cousins gave each other a look of panic. Instantly the two had the same idea. Maeby went into the coffin first with virtually no hesitation, George Michael on the other hand realised that if he went in he would be getting on top of her. Literally.   
“Get in,” she urged, and George Michael did so, carefully entering the coffin and closing the lid back on him as he did so.   
George Michael lay on top of her, the dark completely obscuring any vision the two had. It was a marked contrast to what had been the bright, sunlight classroom just seconds before. The two could both hear and feel the breathing of the other. George Michael, not wanting to make Maeby feel uncomfortable tried to stop his body from crushing her, but he could not help in the closeted space have his groin rest upon hers.   
“So, I’d say we’ve got about ten minutes before the kids get hear. How about you and I put on a little magic show for ourselves?” The voice, while muffled, was unmistakeably Tony Wonder’s.  
“It’s to risky,” protested Sally Sitwell, “if anyone finds out you’re not really gay your entire career will be destroyed. Not to mention me. I don’t want people knowing I date a magician, let alone my boss.”  
“Lying bastards,” George Michael whispered to himself. So, Wonder was just pretending to be gay for his magic act and Sitwell was in on it.   
“Oh come on, five minutes, tops,” responded a groaning Wonder. It was followed by the sound of kissing.   
“Ok, but be quick,” Sitwell said, her voice raised by an octave. “Do it in the coffin, and make sure you remember to put the lid down this time.   
At this, the two cousins trapped in the box looked at each other in another face of sheer dread. George Michael just lay there, unable to think, but fortunately Maeby was already reaching across to the hinges with her left hand in a quick motion, pulling the pin out of the first hinge. George Michael, realising what she was doing stretched his right arm around to pull the pin out of the second hinge, a much harder feat as he had to use his arm to reach it behind him. The sound of kissing and groaning was loud in his ears and with just a moment to left he slammed his hand against the black button. The false bottom of the coffin opened with ease and the two fell through, hitting a rubber mat. Just as the coffin lid was opening George Michael spun around and hit the bottom up, clicking it back into place. The tow falling, even if it was just a very short distance had created a small thud, as had the slamming of the false bottom, but fortunately Wonder was to busy tearing of Sitwell’s clothes for either two if them to realise. A moment later he heard the sound of the coffin lid closing.  
“Where are we?” Maeby asked in a whisper, the words tantalising throughout George Michael’s left ear causing a party of goose bumps to emerge on his skin. He couldn’t see anything but he guessed that their must has been some sort of gap created in the wooden platform that Tony Wonder had created and then fitted his coffin in just so that the trick would work.   
“We must be in that small platform,” he whispered back, and feeling his arms, George Michael realised that they had a little more space then they had in the coffin, although he was still pressed against Maeby in an embarrassing manner. The sounds of lovemaking were louder now, Sally Sitwell’s moans penetrating trough the coffin into the ears of the two teenagers. George Michael did everything he could to stop his erection rising, he desperately tried to imagine Tobias’s testicles, something that he had tried to expunge from his memory many years ago.   
“Oh yes, fuck me. Put that magic in me,” Sitwell said, her words running themselves like the aftermath of an explosion in George Michael’s ears. He was on top of Maeby, his body pressed against hers. He could feel her skin on his, he could feel her breathing on his neck. He could hear the sounds of sex, real life sex, something he had never heard in his entire life. How could he have not stopped his erection from growing. He felt like he was going to die of embarrassment as it pressed onto Maeby. He tried to position himself away but to no avail. For about half a minute the two just lay there, him on top of her, pretending that nothing was happening, the sounds of lovemaking invading their space, unable to be blocked out.   
“Yeah, put it in me, quickly now,” Sitwell urged, her voice not louder but definitely higher. “Put it in me, come on.” Again that sound of animal urge raged itself throughout her tone.   
As the sex started between the two Maeby raised herself towards George Michael’s left ear.  
“It’s ok,” she said in a whisper that was so reassuring George Michael felt that old bravery coming back to him. “Hear, let me help.”  
“What do you mean?” he asked, but almost as soon as he asked the question he felt a hand making touching his penis. He gasped. He gasped in a way that he had never gasped before. The touch sent could have sent him mad. It was the most amazing feeling he had felt as Maeby’s hand stroked him through his tight, to small dark trousers. Her hand made its way, lightly and gently to his tip, then tracing its way back down. Just had Maeby done moments before to the velvet in the coffin when she was looking for the hinges. Up and down she stroked, careful not to hurt him.   
“Oh Maeby,” he wheezed, his breathing rising to out of control depths.  
“Do you want me to stop?” she asked. Even as she said it, she knew the answer as indicated by the seductive manner she said it in. That naughty tone which turned him on so much.  
“No. God no.” The words came out like a prayer. As Maeby continued touching him, fondling him, his right hand slowly made its way to her right breast.   
“Yes. Yes George Michael, touch me there.” At the mention of his name his ego went mad. Never before had he felt as high as now. His hand gripped her breast, his fingers tracing themselves delicately around her nipple. A little moan escaped her mouth, and not thinking, George Michael plunged his lips onto hers, where he was met by a ferocious response of her tongue stretching to meet his in an experience of pure unbridled ecstasy.  
“Yes. Yes. Yes, that’s it. Fee the wonder. Feel the fucking wonder.” The voice was Tony Wonder’s, and it echoed down to the two cousins who were making out in animalistic style. It didn’t turn them off, on the contrary it spurred them on. Maeby’s left hand reached over to the strap on her dress and she pushed it off. What was created was the wonderful sensation of her bare breast being felt by George Michael’s hand so that she herself couldn’t help but moan into his ear. To him, the moan felt like nothing more then pure self-confidence boost, and spurred on he started kissing her neck, moving downwards as he did so. Down and down he went until he reached her bare shoulder, his wet mouth kissing it more and more.   
“Fuck yes, let me get that for you.” Maeby reached back down towards his groin and undid the button on his trousers. She pulled down the zip. Then, with in one swift action she pulled his underwear down just enough so as to let his fully erect penis leap out. She could not see it in the dark, but she could feel it. Her hand on it lead to louder, stronger moans from George Michael. Somewhere in his brain the voice of reason was crying out for him to stop, pointing out that he may be heard by Wonder and Sitwell. But the two adults above them were now doing it fully, themselves lost to the carnivorous pleasures of the body.   
Maeby reached up and kissed him again. This time it was slower and more sensual, but no less fantastic. In fact, its tenderness only seemed to perfect the event that was now occurring between the Maeby and George Michael. An event of pure lust and fun, so that it seemed impossible to him that any of those silly issues that had plagued him before, those issues about her being his cousin could ever have even made him think twice before engaging in such a natural act with this girl who he felt so strongly about. Maeby had got the hang of it by now, and her left hand had wrapped itself around George Michael’s penis, working it so that he was so close, so close. He could feel himself about to be let go, and his mind had lost itself into a pure fog of desire and sexual feeling. His right hand, as if pulled by the desire of Maeby herself had moved down, stroking her leg, stroking her thigh and even cautiously stroking her pleasure centres over her underwear, the two moaning into each other’s ear just so that they could hear and validate themselves in this fantastic appreciation of each other’s body and desires and lust.   
Thud. The thud caused the couple in the coffin, and the couple below them to stop what they were doing. A sudden silence filled the room. Maeby’s hand retreated back to herself while George Michael’s ears primed themselves to hear any whispered conversation.   
“So, I didn’t expect to find you in hear.” The voice was not a whisper, but rather a familiar deep and loud tone with a boisterous edge which met their ears. It was the voice of Gob.   
“Well, when you’re running for congress it helps to go to schools to celebrate their anniversaries. It helps in attracting voters. But when I heard that Gob the magician was performing, well, I naturally came here to see you.”  
George Michael didn’t recognise the voice but Maeby had. “That’s Lucile Austero,” she whispered. “She’s Buster’s ex-girlfriend.”  
“Well, you know it’s over between us right. You and me, we’re just not compatible you know.” That was Gob speaking.   
“Yes of course. Having said that, would you be opposed to some overdue breakup sex, you know, just for fun.”  
Maeby recoiled in horror, and before George Michael knew what was going on there was a thump against the coffin and the sounds of kissing and moaning which George Michael had already heard from Wonder and Sitwell. He heard shuffling above and with an instinctual understanding he crouched up so that his whole body was pressed against the false bottom of the coffin.   
“Oh, Gob you really know how to make a 60-year-old like me feel 50,” Lucile 2 moaned, her voice high and loud.  
“She’s 60,” whispered George Michael to Maeby.   
“Let’s get inside this coffin,” Gob said, his voice loud enough to be heard from across Orange County.   
George Michael heard more frantic whispers from above and braced himself for the weight he would surely encounter on his back. When it came he could have sworn it almost killed him, but he managed to struggle on all the same, refusing to allow Wonder and Sitwell to open the false bottom. If they did not only would they potentially be crushed to death, but worse, they might be discovered.   
“Why wont this bloody thing open?” yelled an angry Gob. Clearly, with Wonder and Sitwell unable to escape through the coffin’s bottom they had resorted to trying to force the lid shut through gripping it from the outside. Just when the situation could not have got any stranger they’re was the sound of the classroom door opening and the deafening sound of chatter as kids sprawled in to see the magic show.   
“Shit,” whispered George Michael.   
“Ok settle down, settle down,” and he could not help but recognise the voice of the very attractive blonde teacher who had escorted them to the changing room. George Michael listened as the teacher settled the students and silence finally came back over the room.   
“Hello kids,” a frantic Lucile 2 voice said, clearly startled as everyone inside that box was at the entry of so many kids into the classroom. “Today you’re, erm… going to see Gob doing a magic trick.”  
“What, no, I’ll think you’ll find my magical illusions in the other room. So, boys and girls if you just want to follow me to my show, you don’t need to see Tony Wonder’s trick anyway.”   
“No!” At this, Wonder had exploded out of his coffin in anger. “You get your hands of my trick you tall arsed bastard.”  
“What the hell,” Lucile 2 yelled in shock as she saw Sally Sitwell coming out of the coffin.  
“What’s going on?” yelled the teacher as kids started to staring, open mouthed as Wonder started arguing with Gob and Sitwell coming out, no doubt desperately trying to straighten out her no doubt ruffled dress.   
As this commotion was happening George Michael dressed himself. His erection had subsided (helped enormously by the sounds of his uncle making out with a 60-year-old woman). He realised something. After all this was over, if Wonder tried to perform his trick he would soon discover what caused the problem, and George Michael and Maeby could only keep hidden in the coffin for so long. They could just admit the truth about their sabotage latter, after all, it didn’t matter to much if Gob got thrown in hot water with the Magician’s Alliance or whatever, not now (and hear George Michael was thinking like a Bluth) they had incriminating blackmail material on him. Ready to put his master plan into action he turned to Maeby.  
“Get ready and follow my lead.”  
“Wait, what are you going t do?” she asked.  
“Just trust me,” was his response. Then, he bent down allowing the already loose false bottom to slide down and open up. Sunlight hit their faces and George Michael burst out with his arms outstretched, fuelled by confidence that he had got from the making out just a few moments before. “Ta-da!” he yelled at the audience of gaping kids, and gaping adults for that matter. He outstretched his hand, pulling Maeby out through the coffin, and together they stepped out onto the wooden platform in front of everyone. Gob, Wonder, Sitwell and Lucie 2 just stared.   
A black kid suddenly got up and pointed in wide amazement at the coffin. “Woah, that’s amazing, how could four people just fit in their like that.”  
“Because,” Gob said, standing forward in front of the kids, “its magic,” and with that he flew his hands to the air causing fire to spark out of his sleeves. And, for once, Gob had the perfect trick. Even if it wasn’t really his own. 

 

After Tony Wonder’s sort of magic show George Michael, Maeby, Gob, Tony Wonder, Sally Sitwell and Lucile Austero found themselves in the corridor outside of the classroom.   
“So, you send your little spies to try and sabotage my show,” Wonder said, looking at Gob with a vengeful look. “You wait till the Magicians Alliance hears about this.”  
“Oh really,” replied Gob. He also had a vengeful look on his face. “Pretending to be gay just for an act when secretly your making out in that coffin. Article IV of the Magicians Constitution expressly forbids any sexual contact within a magical prop, or did you just forget this when you were sticking it to Sitwell.” Gob gave a nod of disgust to Wonder’s assistant that she returned with a deadly look.   
Tony Wonder looked at Gob, and Gob looked back, an understanding seeming to pass between the two men. “Fine,” he said reluctantly. “I won’t mention your acts of sabotage if you stay quiet about my sexuality.”   
“It’s a deal,” replied Gob, and the two men shook hands.   
As Tony Wonder and Sally Sitwell left, George Michel herd him mutter to her, “it’s a disgrace that in the 21st century heterosexuals still have to keep quiet about their sexuality.”  
“Well, we’d better be off,” and without another word to Lucie 2, he left with Maeby and George Michael straggling after him. 

 

As the three of them got into the stair car, Gob turned to his nephew and niece. “So, my question for you two is why did you feel the need to smuggle your way in there? All you had to do was jam the hinges with that hairpin.”  
To George Michael’s surprise, it was him that had the answer, quickest of the mark. “Right, but then when Tony Wonder and Sally Sitwell came in we had to hide in the coffin, and then when they went into the coffin we had to hide underneath the coffin so…”   
As Gob started the engine he looked at the two of them and smirked. “Honestly, do you really think that I’m so stupid I would believe a couple of love birds like you were just hiding down there. Jesus, I know a guilty look when I see one.”   
George Michael was about to protest the implicit accusation when Maeby instantly spoke up angrily. “So what. Who cares if we made out down there, its our business not yours and not our parents so just but out.”   
“Oh,” said Gob happily, “so you admit you were making out. Well, you know that I’m going to have to tell Michael and Lindsey about this.”   
“No!” George Michael yelled instantly, terrified if his father found out. “You promised, you said you would not tell them about the kiss-”   
“And I won’t tell them about the kiss at the kitchen. Just you two possibly having sex underneath a coffin in a classroom packed with 8-year-olds.”   
George Michael, channelling his inner Bluth glared at his uncle and said in a very dark, very low voice, “then we’ll tell everyone about how you snogged Lucile 2.”  
Gob glared back. Maeby gave him a small smile of pride. Eventually, after Gob did the calculations he said, “fine. I won’t tell.”  
George Michael breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank You.”  
“But you two,” Gob indicated at his nephew and niece, “are cousins. You can’t be together. Period.”   
After a tension filled silence Maeby asked in a tone that sounded like she wanted to be defiant, but came of more pleading, “why not?”  
“Because you won’t be able to have kids without their being some possibility that they will end up like Rita. Then, if you get together and you break up badly it could tear Michael and Lindsey apart; breaking up the family. Not to mention that if John Beard and that bunch of a-holes down at that news channel he works at finds out about Bluth incest they would report on it. You two would then be humiliated, but worse it would hurt you Grandfather’s trial because you know, jury’s love families that fuck each other. Not to mention, its weird. So no, I won’t tell Michael and Lindsey about you two but in return you better start trying to move on from each other.”   
Gob’s little speech seemed sensible, and it had liberated that voice in George Michael’s head that had pointed out all the reasons why him and Maeby being together could only end in disaster. The rest of the journey was filled with him and Maeby deep in serious thought about what should happen between them, about their relationship, about their feelings. This was somewhat hard to do however while Gob sang along to ‘It Ain’t Easy Being White’ at the top of his lungs.


	8. Chapter 8

Maeby had gone immediately to her room while George Michael had stayed downstairs for the rest of the afternoon. After Gob had dropped them back home the two cousins had not wanted to discuss what had happened at the magic show just a few hours earlier. Somehow, Maeby sensed that, like her, George Michael had been thinking about what Gob had said about how they could never be together and had taken it seriously. Their uncle’s monologue had been surprisingly sensible for him, (although it was marked somewhat by his singing) and the issues kept on swirling around Maeby’s head. They were cousins, they couldn’t seriously be together. Besides, she continued to herself in an internal conversation within her brain, they were both just teenagers who would go on with their lives and who would inevitably find other people. George Michael was going to university to study computing while she was going back to school to try and graduate. It couldn’t last, or even start. The slow realisation had a depressing effect on Maeby as she sat on the chair in her room, facing a desk cluttered with George Michael’s books and papers that he was reading for his course. His maths book that he had been reading only yesterday lay amongst the rubble of papers. Maeby, distracted and unaware casually opened up the draws of their desk. In one she found the marriage certificate that she had instructed George Michael to throw away, but of course he hadn’t. Not knowing why, her hands folded the document in two and she placed it in the pocket of her jeans. She had changed immediately after she had got back, residing that ridiculous outfit to the back of her wardrobe. She sighed, staring out of her window and wondering what she would talk about with her legal husband when they next had the courage to speak to each other. Her phone rang but seeing that it was her mother she refused to answer it, instead letting it ring until finally it stopped. The ringtone was that wedding ringtone that George Michael had downloaded for her, and the recent memory made her smile, if just for a moment. She must have been sitting there for over an hour, just thinking about all those issues before the boy she was thinking about finally came in. 

 

George Michael was still dressed in that absurd magician’s outfit, although Maeby noted that it was now considerably wrinkled, no doubt by the make out session they had performed just a few hours ago at the school. He entered the room slowly, a look of embarrassment on his face. The two teenagers said nothing as he sat down on the lower bed next to Maeby, they sat there not speaking until at last George Michael turned around to her and said, in a voice filled with unconvincing bravery, “so, I think we should talk about what happened back at the school.”   
Maeby turned to him slowly and gave him a small smile. “Yeah, I think we should.”   
“Its just that all those things that Gob said are true.” George Michael sighed, and Maeby could feel the pain resonating in his voice, “I really like you and everything and I find you incredibly attractive and everything, but we are cousins.” He took another deep breath before continuing, “and so I just don’t think that anything can really ever happen between us despite how I feel because your family and so,” he paused, looking for the right words, “and so we just can’t be together because of that.” He gulped and looked away as if he was suffering from a guilty conscience.   
“Yeah. I get that.” Maeby spoke the words so quietly it was practically a whisper. Logically she knew she should be happy that he had just said all the things that she had bee thinking about. That he had come to all the conclusions that she had come to. But hearing him say those words as he did, and as frankly as he did just made Maeby feel utterly despondent. She stared out of the window, refusing to allow George Michael to look at her as tears started breaking out in her eyes. She felt her whole world seeming to just fade away. She was angry and hurt. All she wanted to do was just lean over and kiss the boy that she loved, that she felt so attracted to. But knowing that she couldn’t, not because her love was unrequited but because of society’s boundaries and because of the bad luck she had to be a member of this stupid family that she hated. Her mother who had just gone away to Mexico and didn’t even think twice about her and her father who never raised her as a father should. It was unfair. The words echoed around her head. It was unfair. She felt angry as well as miserable, her hands scrunching themselves up in her lap as she tried to hold back tears. She didn’t want him to see her like this, afraid and desperate, but at the same time she couldn’t help but be glad he was sitting right beside her.   
“I’m so sorry. This is so unfair,” George Michael said, his hand soothingly stroking her shoulder. That word, unfair, it seemed to illustrate everything about this strange and terrible situation that Maeby was in. She just wanted to yell at someone. She wanted to yell at her parents, possibly even George Michael just for falling for her like she fell for him, but the anger was placated by the total feeling of powerless that had now absorbed itself into her. So instead of yelling or shouting she did the sensible thing and wiped the tears away from her eyes and gave George Michael a small, if weak smile.   
“I agree,” she said, holding back tears. “You’re right of course.” She was looking at him and he could see that his eyes wee also red, his face white.   
“Well,” he said, raising his voice so as to present a self-confidence that they both knew was fake, “we ought to have some rules.”  
“Rules,” Maeby said, giving a small and hollow laugh. It was such a George Michael way of thinking.   
“Yes,” he continued. “I think we have to agree no more kissing or making out, its just better that way.”  
Maeby nodded reluctantly. “That makes sense.”  
“But we should still be friends.” He paused. “And I think the best way to do that would be if we can feel free to talk about our feelings to get over each other. After all, its not like we have anyone else to talk to them about.”  
Maeby exhaled a breath in relief. She still felt terrible in a way that she had never felt before, but somehow knowing for definite that she still had George Michael as a friend and someone who she could talk to about her romantic feelings, rather then doing what they had both been doing for too long, namely bottling them up and denying them, seemed to make the situation just a little less worse.   
“The most important thing is that we stick together,” she said, looking straight at him now, straight into his eyes. “I don’t want to lose you as a friend.”  
“Neither do I.” George Michael gave a long pause, looking down as he said it in an embarrassed tone, “I suppose that’s just what you do when you love someone. You do everything you need to do so that you can stay with them.”  
Maeby’s heart skipped a beat when he uttered the word love. She realised that this was love, not just sexual attraction or a romantic fling brought on by two hormonal teenagers living in close quarters to each other. This was love. Another part of her brain said that she was being crazy, that this attraction was only the result of not having a boyfriend or just sexual desire or wanting to be loved or anything else. How could she love? She was Maeby, hard headed Maeby who didn’t even really love her own parents. She stood up and looked down at George Michael. She didn’t respond, she knew it would be bad if she did. She couldn’t admit how she felt without enlarging these feelings even more, but she couldn’t deny them. They needed to be honest with each other. So instead of speaking, she bent down and kissed George Michael on the forehead. She allowed her lips the luxury of lingering they’re for a moment, taking him in both physically and emotionally before making her way towards the door.   
“You just broke a rule,” George Michael said, gentle in his voice as Maeby left to go   
downstairs and give him his privacy. She turned her chiding head and gave him a smile.   
“Well, are you going to punish me if I break them?” She left the room, allowing her free long hair to flow behind her as she did so. She chided herself when she walked down the stairs, she should not have flirted like that, it was the complete opposite of what she agreed. Somehow however, in the moment, it felt innocent. Like some throwaway comment that didn’t really mean anything. She hoped, with some sadness, that everything they had experienced together could be seen as just throwaway comments or throwaway kisses. Harmless flirting with no consequence other then a laugh. Possibly this was the best way to hide those deeper feelings she had; behind a mask of openness. To denigrate and desacralize what the two had into a joke, and so thus quench that dangerous word that George Michael had just used a moment ago. Love.


	9. Chapter 9

As George Michael and Maeby considered their complicated relationship, CIA agent Richard Shaw was pouring coffee for his female colleague in a rented apartment down in the centre of Orange County. The female agent was busy typing on a computer, a phone hooked into it, analysing its data. Shaw handed her the coffee which she proceeded to gulp down before turning back to her keyboard.   
“Ok. So what do you have?” the male agent asked.   
“Nothing,” she replied flatly. “The phone I stole from George Oscar Bluth at the school has nothing on it other than a stupid ringtone.” She turned angrily to Shaw. “I had to spend a week posing as a teaching assistant just so we could get hold of this useless data.”   
Shaw smiled at her. “Well, its all in the cause of protecting America.”  
“Yeah well, America doesn’t have to put up with little kids yelling at you all the time cause their classmate stole their lunch money. I don’t know why we thought there would be anything on here that we could give to the prosecution.”  
“Well there doesn’t have to be anything concreate,” said Shaw casually, “just stuff that we can pin on George Bluth so that the truth about us using him to build wiretapped homes in Iraq doesn’t come out. Coretta are you sure there isn’t anything suspicious on that phone that we could use?”  
Coretta Lila sighed. “This phone has numinous memos regarding a ‘Franklin.’ Stuff like ‘remember to find Franklin’ and ‘memo to buy Franklin a new suite’ and ‘remember to redye F.’ Just nonsense like that-”  
“Redye?” interrupted Shaw quizzically.   
“Yes. It turns out Franklin is a ventriloquist puppet, which is odd because he’s in the Orange County police database for resisting arrest.”  
“Let’s see him.”  
Lilia’s hands raced across her keyboard and within a minute a mug shot of Franklin appeared on the screen. “There you are sir. African American and with an age range of anywhere between 20-40. Exact details were not taken at the time by the police department due to his refusal to answer any questions put to him.”  
The CIA agent gave a small laugh. “Give him to us, we would have him talking within 48 hours. Why was he let off?”  
Lilla gave her partner a stern look. “Because he was a puppet.”  
“Ah. I see. Political correctness no doubt.”  
“Well, that and the Supreme Court ruling in United States v Kermit that all puppets on account of their not living be exempt from all criminal prosecution.”   
Shaw tutted. “If it was up to me there wouldn’t even be a judicial branch. Who needs three branches of government anyway, back home there’s a tree in my local park with only two branches and that’s been there for over 50 years. But maybe we can use this Franklin to claim that he was a liaison for George Bluth back when he was making contracts with Saddam, and that he’s now getting his son to try and stop him from testifying.”  
“But Richard,” replied a sceptical Lila, “wont it become obvious that he wasn’t a liaison between the Bluth and the Iraqi’s at the trial. After all, he is just a puppet.”  
Shaw smirked as if the question was just a childish concern. “Hey Bhagatveer, get in here. For once we actually need you.”  
An elderly Asian man with a bright orange turban walked into the room. “Yes?” he asked grumpily.   
“Come here, we need you to turn this puppet into a real person.”  
Bhagatveer walked in reluctantly and took Lila’s place at the computer. “So, you want me to turn this puppet into, what, a man.”  
“Exactly,” replied a frosty Lila.  
“And make sure you add on a beard as well” added Shaw. “It’ll make him look more Muslim and so the jury will be more inclined to believe he was working for a terrorist supporting government. No offense,” he added hastily.  
Bhagatveer fixed him with an exasperated stare. “For the millionth time, I’m a bloody Sikh.”  
“We know, we know, there are different denominations. We’re the CIA, we’re not idiots. Now can you please turn this puppet into a man so we can cover up the fact we were using an unreliable businessman to spy on a dictator who we thought had weapons of mass destruction but then didn’t.”  
Bhagatveer reluctantly allowed himself to obey his boss’s order as he photoshopped the picture of Franklin into an almost unrecognisable human face. “This is not why I joined the CIA you know,” he protested angrily, but Shaw and Lila were both lost in their spiral of lies.   
“I think we should give Franklin a secret codename for when he was working for Saddam,” Shaw said, feeling the air with his hands. “We can’t make up a surname or the defence could get a warrant to track him down in the taken Iraqi security databases, so we’ll just say his codename from 2001 to 2003 was… Mr F. Once we’ve got the details I’ll make contact with our good friend Wayne Jarvis so the prosecution has all the relevant details.”  
“Perfect,” replied Lila, making a note on a piece of paper. “But we still need to collect enough ‘evidence’ to make sure that George Bluth goes down for good.”  
Shaw gave his colleague a large smile. “Well, I believe that’s your department.”  
“Indeed it is.” And with that, Coretta Lila walked of confidently as she prepared for her new infiltration mission.


	10. Chapter 10

It had been three days since Maeby and George Michael’s make out session at Gob’s magic show and their eventual decision not to pursue a relationship owing to the fact that they were cousins. This however had not stopped Maeby from giving George Michael small smiles over dinner and discreet winks when no one was watching. He often looked away nervously when this happened, not knowing how to respond. Had they not agreed not to be together? In Maeby’s mind there was nothing dangerous about the occasional look, it made her feel special and powerful every time she flirted with George Michael; she only whished he would respond rather then just pretending that there was no tension between them. She found herself unable to sleep, thinking of the boy below her. She found herself constantly wanting to touch him, imagining the two of them in erotic situations, whishing for them to be together both emotionally and physically. Normally her stressful job as a movie producer would keep her distracted and so too busy for her to have the luxury of pondering her constrained and tension filled relationship with her cousin, but she had not been given any new movie scripts for a while, and she had been told that it would probably be like this for a few weeks while more experienced producers dealt with the release of the summer romcom films. She had briefly considered trying to resurrect that film about British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (figuring it would play well with the Jewish demo) but she couldn’t bring herself to do this after she remembered how she had invented a Benjamin as a fake date so as to fool her uncle Gob, only to then pretend to masturbate to him (Benjamin, not her uncle Gob) so as to make George Michael jealous. And so, bored with nothing to do she fantasised and imagined, desperate to hold George Michael, even if she knew it could neve be. So she gave him winks and smiles, flirtatious looks and allowed her hand to linger on his shoulder for just a little longer then need be. It was all just innocent fun under the Californian sun as far as she was concerned. 

 

It was late in the Bluth-Funke household. Maeby made her way to her bedroom for the night feeling tired and exhausted. When she entered the room she discovered that George Michael was already there, dressed in his pyjamas. She gave him a sly smile which he returned with his trademark nervous one, glancing down at his bare feet once he gave it. She went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth and used the privacy to change into her pyjamas. When she entered, she noticed that the sheets had been taken off from her bed.   
“Where the hell are my sheets?” she demanded.   
“I don’t know,” replied George Michael.  
“Ah, Maeby. About your sheets.” In stepped Tobias looking guilty. “Well, let me start from the beginning, you see, I’m planning on directing a new production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, so I had to borrow your sheets so as to compare backgrounds outside. Unfortunately, I may have left them in the garden while it was raining and so I’m afraid that they may be just a little bit soaking wet.” Maeby glared at her father. “Sorry,” he added.   
“Great!” she said angrily. “For heavens sake dad, you never respect me or ever care about me! You never respect me or listen to me or even pay attention to me! It was just like this in Boston, and it’s the same now!”  
Tobias was silent for a few moments. “Maeby, as the world’s first clinical analrapist I think that all this pent-up anger might be more than just about me taking your sheets, don’t you?”  
Maeby breathed hard. She felt angry. Angry not just about the sheets but about how she was never cared for properly by her absent parents. Her mother had not be seen for four days, her father barley acknowledged her existence. She felt angry and furious. She looked at Tobias. “Yeah. Yeah I guess you’re right.”  
“And I think I know what this really is about.”   
“Yeah. I think you do.”  
“You clearly are upset that I didn’t ask you to be in my production of Romeo and Juliet.”  
Maeby stared in disbelief at her father. “You just don’t get it do you?”  
“No I do get,” he said, putting his hands up, “and that is why if you really want it, I will give you the chance to play Juliet, but only if you really want it.”   
“No!” she yelled, angry and furious at her father.   
“Ok, ok. I was kind of hoping this would be a family thing you know. After all, I’m going to try and get Buster to play Richard III, his hook makes him perfect for the part.”  
It was at this moment that George Michael found himself unable not to interrupt the conversation. “I don’t think Richard III had a hook, and I don’t think he’s actually in Romeo and Juliet.”   
Tobias gave his nephew in law a small smile. “Oh George Michael, once you gain my acting talent you’ll one day see that when it comes to Shakespeare, its all just one giant mosaic of intellectual brilliance. I’m even going to see if I can persuade Lucile to play Lady Macbeth.” Spoiler alert, she would refuse. “I really think she would nail the whole getting her husband King Richard to kill Romeo thing really well. Of course, it means Buster would have to pretend to be married to his mother and be totally subordinate to her, but I think with my coaching he should be able to pull it off.” Tobias chuckled to himself in a blissful happiness as he left the room.   
“Can you believe that!” Maeby exclaimed angrily, pointing accusingly at the door her father had just left through. “He is just totally oblivious to any of my feelings.”  
“Yeah,” replied George Michael. He touched her arm lightly in an effort to console her. “I sometimes feel like that with my dad to.”  
Maeby gave him a smile. “At least your dad is trying,” and the comment made George Michael smile back. “But where am I going to sleep tonight?”   
“You could always sleep in my bed. I made the sheets this morning so their clean.” There was a pause and then, “but I could always sleep downstairs on the sofa so its fine, its not like I’m trying to trick you into sleeping with me because I would never do that or-”  
“That’s a very generous offer George Michael.” Those words shut George Michael up, and he smiled back at his cousin. “But I can’t force you to sleep on the couch, that would be wrong of me to do.”  
“I’ll be fine with that you know. My internal body clock allows me to sleep by ten o’clock wherever I am so…”   
“You know, if you feel comfortable, and only if you feel comfortable, we could sleep in your bed together.”   
Another silence fell over the two. “But, what about the rules we came up with.”  
Maeby gave him a reassuring smile. “It’s not like there’s anything sexual about us sleeping in the same bed. Besides, it’s just for one night.” She gave him another smile. Come on George Michael, its ok.”  
“Well, I mean, I don’t see why not.” He looked embarrassed and terrified. At the same time, in his eyes Maeby could detect a sense of excitement that she had seen when she had kissed him at the kitchen four days ago.   
“Ok then,” she said, still smiling.   
“Well, I’m just going to brush my teeth and then, well you know.” George Michael walked into the adjoining bathroom nervously. Maeby watched as he walked past her, her eyes examining every part of his body. 

 

When George Michael exited the bathroom, Maeby felt her heart race with excitement. His hair was all ruffled up, not stylishly spiked like it usually was. She to had her hair long and frizzy, and both teenagers felt somewhat childish dressed in their pyjamas. She felt giddy, like a schoolgirl flirting with a boy in the playground, and she could not feel happy as George Michael pulled up the neatly placed duvet for the two of them to get into. Then he walked over to the light and switched it off, plunging the room into a sudden darkness that exhilarated Maeby. As the dim shadow of George Michael walked over to her she felt every part of her body, including the parts below her waist, tingle with excitement. Her body was alive in the dark.   
“Do you want to go in first?” he asked, a nervousness in his voice.  
“Sure,” she replied, and she slipped into his bed. He followed. Maeby took a deep breath and turned around so she was facing George Michael who was facing her. It was dark and only a faint outline of could be seen by the other. They were so close they could feel the slow breath of the other on their face. It was so quiet they could hear the intake of breaths from each other. They both had their eyes wide open, staring at each other. Maeby felt her mouth salivate, opened just a bit but unable to close. She wanted to stretch out and touch him. She did. Only his hair, loose and floppy she pushed it out of his eyes. It felt sexual, the situation. After all, they were in bed together. But it wasn’t like back at the school when they had touched each other like that for the first time. Maeby wanted him to touch her sure, caress her neck and fondle her all over. She wanted him to tear of the sheets of the bed and rip of her pyjamas so that her whole excited body was exposed to him. She wanted him to have her in the night and feel him on her in a way that she had not felt before. But it didn’t seem right if he had done so. Like it would have soiled this precious moment between them if they did have sex. Like a bad joke at a funeral or a heckler at a great speech. She allowed herself to feel turned on but contented herself to not doing anything about it.   
“Maeby, are you comfortable.” The question was not asked to break the silence but asked out of genuine concern. The bed was small and they were pushed together.   
“Well, my back is kind of squashed here,” she whispered truthfully.   
“You can come closer if you like.” The words were an invitation. Maeby moved herself closer to him, and the bodies touched entirely. Every part against hers, the heat between the two rising to dangerous proportions. She felt his bare feet curl around hers, but they were cold and the cold made it feel so much better. Her forehead was almost touching his, she could just about feel a few strands of his hair on hers. Her breasts were thrust against his chest, both moving in and out as the two breathed in the darkness of the room. Her knee on his groin. They were so close, closer in a way then they had been underneath that stupid coffin when she had felt his erection against her. Their noses were touching now. She gave a small girlish laugh, and he responded with a quiet chuckle. The two fell asleep that night each having one hand held in the other. They just lay their for a while, eyes open, looking at each other. Maeby knew she was in love, as much as it killed her to admit it. But the feeling between them was of a fundamental force that she could only assume was love, deep love and care. She felt safe in his bed next to him. She felt happy and she did not feel alone. Her mind was calmed and she drifted of, the two bodies intertwined completely. That night she had no dreams, she just slept on into the late hours of the morning.


End file.
